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Isn't 5% a lot? IIRC even the US aren't that high. And what are we supposed to use all those soldiers and weapons for? Surely that's overkill, even for Russia? Is this actually about China?
Edit: It's 3.5% on the military and 1.5% on dual use infrastructure like roads, for a total of 5%. That's high but quite a bit more sane.
5% is, in fact, a whole shitload.
The US is at about 3%, which is an insane amount a lot of which gets allocated to random domestic pork-barrel projects, or basic scientific research which is just getting funneled through the "defense" department for basically no reason. Upping it to more than the US spends per capita on its military is bonkers.
That being said, I get it. These are bonkers times. Russia is doing for-real military invasions and bombing whole cities and shows no signs of wanting to stop, and the US is no longer a reliable partner for defense and deterrence. It might be fine, but it might not. It's time to get ready to look after our own safety again, after a long period of not really having to worry as long as you were white and Western. I get why they're doing it.
5% is about what the UK spent up to 1985. It was 7% in 1960.
France spent 3% in 85, and 5% in the 60s, but they count "defence spending" differently.
The UK in 1985 was being run by people who grew up getting their cities bombed out and not having enough to eat because of the war, or having friends and family members dead because they were in the infantry and didn't come back.
I posted a chart elsewhere in these comments; all during the modern era it's been hovering around 1.5%, and then suddenly in the last few years people are invested in paying more, what with the US and Russia collaborating to make them nervous about their safety again.
Now it is whole 25 years after the Matrix movie, Windows 2000, Babylon V series and Star Wars The Phantom Menace. Which feel like almost recent. In 1985 it was 25 years after the moment closest to starting a nuclear war, and 25 years before that there were wars in ex-colonies all over the globe. And 50 years before that WWII was starting.
Time is elusive. The Phantom Menace is closer to USSR's invasion of Afghanistan than to now. And much closer to 1985 than to now.
OK, what I really mean is - 1985 was before USSR failed. When it failed, every first and second world society underwent a cultural shock. Expectations formed that it will be futuristic heaven now with no war and reaching for the stars, some capitalist version of the Soviet futurism with unified humanity, that now western nations are unmatched militarily, because all military actions will be like SG-1 series expeditions.
So - this shock led to some popular, but catastrophic changes, like complacency in the face of totalitarianism and reduction in armed forces in the western nations. One can even say that the USSR lost the cold war, and the west lost the peace that followed it.
Watch us get in a war and see where that percentage goes, along with inflation.
It's about war with the US. Well, probably other places too. Writing's been on the wall for a while.
Until the USA goes full dictatorship (admittedly less hypothetical than I'd like) that's not going to happen. Democracies don't fight like this.
Also the US is who is pushing hardest for higher NATO defence spending. So that makes no sense.
Until the USA goes full dictatorship (admittedly less hypothetical than I’d like)
I have bad news for you.
I'm not trying to exaggerate the situation, but they're imprisoning journalists, kicking random people out of the country or keeping them in conditions so bad that it sometimes kills them, they just bombed a random country ignoring the system that's supposed to make that illegal without authorization, and so on and so on. They just assassinated a Democratic politician.
It's all a spectrum. People are still in the streets without being shot, they're still backing down or being forced to free some particular people. But the standard of "going to war without authorization" is a guard-rail that fell years ago, and more are falling every week now. If you're waiting for the moment to fight back against the dictatorship, this is it.
If you’re waiting for the moment to fight back against the dictatorship, this is it.
This is always it. There's no time and place without the threat of dictatorship. There's always evil around you, near you, to be fought or else someone else will have to fight it, or you again - but much stronger.
Western underground counterculture of 70s and 80s was very good in the sense of understanding this, the general anti-war fuck-your-pretense rock-n-roll arrest-me-officer mood, unfortunately in the 90s people got complacent.
Same with critical\progressive worldview, it got neutered, diluted, saturated with "normal", "allowed", "by the rules" struggle for the rights of protected groups and cancelling bad people from among celebrities.
While logically intersectionality dictates that your first duty as a citizen is to look for more basic dangers, and react to them not "by the rules", but with Molotov cocktails and sabotage.
Journalism "by the rules" is just PR, protest "by the rules" is just fashion, and politics "by the rules" is just collaborationism.
OK, it was very brave (/s) from me to write this, but living in Moscow, Russia, I suppose this is just talk.
So, you're right that higher NATO spending is bad for the US. That's why historically they haven't pushed for it. But now the US is im the grip of nepo baby morons that have no understanding of anything. They think army guys & bombs are le hecking epic & that's the extent of the reasoning. See also: like every hereditary monarch ever.
European democracies obviously do understand the long term implications which is why they're taking the opportunity to arm up.
Do NATO members expect America to honour it's side of the alliance if they get attacked?
At this point, they certainly shouldn't be counting on it
NATO is a sham anyways, just disband it!
Instance checks out.
Yes, you should check it out, you might start cracking through the programming
Funny to say that about a place that's desinged to radicalise you towards supporting the enemy
People on every other instance are able to say whatever they want, they can have open discussion, they can criticize .ml or NATO or Trump or the Democrats. Which is as it should be.
The mythology that .ml enacts its insane level of censorship because it's helping people "crack through the programming" by expressing viewpoints and arguments that are also allowed everywhere else, and the censorship is a necessary part of making that possible (by banning any disagreement shielding it from the commonsense arguments that generally can debunk it), is some Karl Rove shit.
The only serious censorship on Lemmy is coming from neolib-psyop instances like .world trying to control the narrative
Like I said, you will have precisely 0 problem in telling whatever narrative on Lemmy.world or wherever. You are spouting a comfortable myth which is commonly believed on .ml but has no basis in reality and is in fact 100% backwards.
I’ll prove it: Tell me the narrative, and I guarantee you we will be able to talk about it for any length of time without anyone coming in and doing any serious censorship.